Hermeneutics Workshop

Welcome to my new blog! Why does the world need another one? Well, we seem to be lacking ….

…. a New Zealand, Anglican, liberal evangelical biblical scholar who will have a go at explaining, no make that publicly exploring, how someone with these attributes goes about reading the Bible in a way that preserves both the reader’s integrity and the canonical status of holy scripture.

And that is necessary right now because …. the Anglican church here and overseas is in some turmoil over issues concerning sexuality, and in particular whether we should recognize and bless same-sex relationships, and how such relationships bear on the recognition of leadership within our spiritual community.

I will run this as a blog, with regular posts on its front page inviting responses from any readers who are honest enough to give their names.  Most of my detailed hermeneutical work will appear in the form of Pages (watch the  top right widget), my aim being to build up an integrated, systematic framework in which principles of interpretation arise out of, and are tested against, an examination of particular texts.

As a run-up to this blog, I have made a number of contributions in recent months to the comments columns of Peter Carroll’s excellent blogs, Anglican Down Under and Hermeneutics and Human Dignity. The significant difference between Peter and me is that, although a truly gracious soul, he would avoid the “liberal” tag in his effort to fully articulate a more conservative evangelical tradition. One of his persistent themes, on both blogs, is that several Western provinces of the Anglican communion have rushed towards some radical changes in their policy on sexuality without developing and negotiating a corresponding change in agreed theological understanding of what they are doing.  This blog will attempt to make a contribution to the theological debate he and others are calling for. By establishing this site as a separate entity, I intend to remain in conversation with Peter’s Hermeneutics and Human Dignity blog as a primary partner in dialogue, while taking responsibility for laying out a biblically-based case for  the changes in Anglican sexuality policy that I believe are mandated by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

A recent exchange with Peter and others has given me an initial set of important questions to address:-

1. What relationships among its members should the church bless?
2. What relationships disqualify Christians from office?
3. What part do the church’s blessing and/or the state’s legalisation of a relationship have in regard to question 2?
4. Is same gendered sexual activity sin, whether or not expressing love?
5. What responsibility does the church have for making official pronouncements clarifying whether given behaviours are sinful?

While I intend my hermeneutical explorations on this site to roam far beyond the focus on sexuality implied by these questions, they are certainly of pressing importance just now and give me a good initial focus.  I will now get on with laying out my page structure.